We Put Our Dreams Through the Shredder
The day of regionals had felt so surreal to Quinn. Karofsky had been such a shock to them all, such a splash of reality upon their dreamed world. Being in Glee Club was such a safe thing; they were so protected and sheltered, and their little bubble of happiness never stopped to pop, but rather persistently held out against their many squabbling punctures. But Karofsky had been in such a cold place, and Quinn couldn't have imagined the shard of ice he had taken to the heart with the sudden bullying, and without any support system to acclimate him to the harshness. But still, as the Glee Club weathered their way through the sadness surrounding Karofsky's situation, life had gone on. They still had to be preparing for sectionals. Among the God Squad meetings and emergency club meetings, and between light things like Rory trying peanut butter for the first time and Quinn's contemplations of rejoining the Cheerios and heavy things like Mr. Schue admitting his contemplations of suicide, Quinn had managed to take up most of the responsibilities of song selection, knowing they had to adjust their songs to the recent happenings. Besides, it was also a great way to distract herself from Rachel's looming wedding…
Quinn had decided to invite Kurt and Blaine along to help her song selection. A few days before regionals, they were on her doorstep and knocking softly. As she went up to answer the door, she peeked through the peephole, laughing quietly at the sight of Blaine pecking Kurt on the cheek.
"Boys," she interjected, swinging open the door, "glad you're here!"
"No problem, Quinn," Kurt responded. Blaine nodded and smiled, a wide smile, and stepped across the threshold.
Quinn lead them up to her room, all the while noticing the way Kurt and Blaine's hands hovered so close to each other, like a small magnetic field encapsulated in their skin pulled them together.
"Let's get to work," she hummed gently. "I think we've all agreed that our song selections for regionals should reflect what recently happened with Karofsky and fall in that general inspiration category." Quinn sank onto her bed and motioned at them to join her, with Kurt sitting down neatly and Blaine slinging himself into the spot next to Kurt.
"Yes," Blaine answered, his posture now straight and his eyes undeterred and focused. Kurt laughed at his ridiculous position.
"Any ideas?"
"We should do 'Fly' by Nicki Minaj," Blaine suggested eagerly, a few moments later.
"Fly, Blaine? Really, Fly?" Kurt shook heavily with laughs, leaning easily into Blaine's shoulder. "Just disregard most of what he says," he murmured to Quinn from Blaine's shoulder between brief peals of mirth. "He clearly has no idea what he's saying."
"Hey!" Blaine disclaimed, "I think you're the clueless one, thank you very much."
"How about we start working on picking these songs?" Kurt suggested sprightly, throwing Quinn a mock exasperated look.
"Hold on," her voice lingered as she drew her thoughts out in her head, "that could actually work."
"Are you insane, Fabray?" Kurt immediately rang out.
"See, Kurt, someone here appreciates me."
"Oh, shut up Blaine," he returned. "I think I do more than simply appreciate."
"Touché."
As soon as a comfortable silence fell, with Kurt straining his eyes sideways and Blaine doing the same, Quinn said, "You know, I could sit here all day and watch you two flirt with each other; it's very amusing." She rested on one curved arm, a mock thinker position, her mouth crooked upwards at the edges and her eyebrow conspicuously raised.
"Point taken," Kurt answered, levying a shove against Blaine's shoulder. His drolly keen face was in plain view one moment, and then suddenly, vanished the next, as he toppled over the side of the bed and onto the soft carpet floors.
"Oh my God , Kurt." Quinn grasped at her sides, burying her face into a pillow and silently trying to control the impeding racks of laughter. Kurt joined her joyous pain a moment later, shaking his head soundlessly and concealing his face behind his hands. "Did that really just happen?"
"I think it did," he responded, red in the face. "Oh my God."
"Hey!" Blaine interpolated. He hastily pushed himself off the ground, staring Kurt heavily down for a few moments before turning back to Quinn. "You were saying?"
"Right," she said, attempting to steady her breathing, "I was saying…." brief laughter dying out, "that 'Fly' could actually work." Her breathing was again under control. "Of course, we would have to mash it up with something… like… like… what about 'I Believe I Can Fly'?" A brief pause in which ideas crackled between them. "What do you guys think about that?"
"Well," Blaine asserted compellingly, "I for one think that's a great idea."
Kurt elbowed him in the ribs before responding. "As do I," he agreed, still half on the verge of breathlessness.
"If we're doing 'Fly', we need to decide who's doing the rapping parts," Kurt added. "Now, I know the obvious choice in all our minds is Blaine," his smile quirked towards the direction Blaine was sitting from him," but we need to pick someone who is less overexposed."
Blaine simply groaned.
Mildly, Quinn rolled her eyes. "Literally the worst to try to work with," she muttered spiritedly under her breath.
"You know you love us," Kurt told her, his straight face showing no cracks in its demeanor as he met her eyes.
She sighed. "I can't even deny that."
"Anyways," she continued a few seconds later, "I think Blaine could rap it."
Kurt screwed his face up in artificial horror. "Are you… are you sure you're okay, Quinn?" Knocking lightly on her head, he continued. "I'm frankly getting worried…"
"Blaine," Quinn complained under Kurt's playful examination, "prove me right before he actually does something to injure me!"
"Yes, Blaine, show us," Kurt repeated, turning a challenging glare at Blaine as he played absentmindedly with Quinn's hair, twirling the brilliant golden curls around his finger over and over again.
"I'm not… um, I'm not rapping it alone, right?" He smiled nervously, trying to pass off his anxiety with a laugh.
"No," Quinn answered. "You can rap with… oh my God, you can rap with Santana." Kurt stopped coiling that strand of hair around his finger in shock.
"Santana?" Blaine sounded vaguely ardent.
"Yes. This'll be great; it'll mean something to both of you, and you can bring that to your singing."
"Mean something to us?"
"The lyrics. They mean something to all of us, of course, but your guys' trauma has been so recent, and she never took refuge in Glee to get through it, not until she was forcefully outed, and even then it was still hard, and you never had a relationship with your Glee Club to lean on them like that either. It'll mean something."
Blaine sat there staring at the soft pattern of Quinn's bedspread. "And what do they mean to you?" he asked quietly. With a start, she hesitated, looking hurriedly away. This prompted Blaine and Kurt to look at her, look at her with such brokenness hidden in their eyes , and she couldn't help but capitulate.
"It's no matter, we should be working on song selection right now anyways," he put out into the silence a few moments later.
"No, it's okay," she assured him.
"It means," she continued, carefully making eye contact with both of them before lowering her line of vision, "It means that even after everything that happened to me, those things that I inflicted on myself and those things others inflicted on me… it means that I made it. I made it through."
She felt the bobbing pressure of Kurt rubbing a hand over her back.
"I can't help but think how it could've gotten bad… it could've gotten really bad… my heart could've been battered until I had no choice but to sink."
In her peripheral vision she saw Blaine's eyes soften, soften with such an indulgent care that she found herself reaching a hand out to him and clasping his.
"But… it never got that bad. I had Glee to get me through, and that really helped, it really helped a lot. And I just… it means… I'm there now. I'm finally doing my own thing, and I'm happy with how I am, what I'm doing, what I do and don't have… completely happy."
Kurt noted the sarcasm evident in her last sentence, still rubbing her back lightly. "Something's still bothering you."
Blaine jumped into the conversation with a hesitant question, applying a slight squeeze to her hand. "It's Rachel, isn't it?"
If she was shocked, she didn't portray any of it. Her mouth simply drew up at the corners, and she bobbed her head once. "Was it that obvious?"
"Yeah… it kind of was."
Kurt nodded sympathetically from the corner of her eye.
"I love Rachel," he said, "but she's kind of being an idiot right now."
"I just want to tell her how I feel," she hummed sadly, grabbing a pillow and hiding her face in it to mask her inflamed cheeks.
"But her wedding," A moment later. "That wedding."
"It's actually getting ridiculous now." Quinn sighed. "I don't need her like I needed Finn; I don't care about what people will say if we get together. I don't need her like I needed Puck; she's not my ticket back to this perfect thing I created. And I certainly don't need her like I needed Sam; she's not new and cute and an easy distraction. She's just her, and the way her wedding with Finn is ragging on me is kind of getting ridiculous."
"I don't think you should tell her," Blaine stated. "Not outright, anyways. It'll complicate too many things. But you should still tell her."
"How would I manage that?"
"Easy! The same way we do everything in Glee Club," his countenance lightened, "through song."
"Are you suggesting a duet?" Kurt queried.
"Well, no. That's too obvious, and we can't be obvious when we're all basically teetering on the brink of insanity here regarding Finn and Rachel's wedding. Even they're going crazy about it themselves! But, give her a song that fits this playbill of inspiration, but still means something to you. It'll mean something to her too."
"'Here's to Us'," Quinn whispered.
Blaine nodded and started singing it under his breath. "Here's to us, here's to love, all the times we messed up."
Kurt smiled at him and continued. "Here's to you, fill the glass, 'cause the last few days have gone too fast. So let's give 'em hell, wish everybody well, here's to us, here's to us."
"That's-" Blaine started.
"-perfect." Kurt finished. "That's perfect."
Quinn's mouth curled up in a half motion, like a half orbit of the moon. Her mouth controlled her eyes, which began prickling up with comically blue tears, ebbing and flowing with the movement of her smile. Finally, with a hasty wipe to the eyes to control the seasons within her, she pulled Kurt and Blaine into a firm hug and buried her face in their necks.
"I love you boys."
The Troubletones had wanted to select their own song for regionals, so after they performed 'Stronger', to much morale boosting applause, it was on to 'Fly/I Believe I can Fly'. Quinn watched from the background as Blaine and Santana rapped their hearts out, and Rachel lead the rest of the club in the rising melody. Her voice was beautiful among the ethereal nature of the strain.
Suddenly, all too fast, it was time for 'Here's to Us'. Rachel had a look of some sort of misperception or apprehension on her face for a few split seconds before she started the song, but other than that, Quinn saw no indication that she had noticed anything different in the routine: not in the song, not in Kurt and Blaine, not in the way trepidation hung on Quinn like a too small sweater, an overgrown remnant from the past. In fact, Rachel had looked up to where Finn was the entire time, never risking a look back to see Quinn's heart fall through her chest.
Before consulting Kurt and Blaine, Quinn went to Sue's office to plea for another try at the Cheerio's.
When she tried her won uniform on, it felt like a snug comfort she never wanted to leave.
The best part was that she didn't feel an obligation to be anything in that uniform other than herself.
"Kurt! Blaine!" Quinn jogged up to them, her uniform subtly flapping around her as she ran. Their mouths opened to utter a greeting, or perhaps a compliment on her uniform, but before they could get them out Quinn hauled their arms in tow behind her, dragging them towards an abandoned classroom. Her sneakers thudded soundly among the buzzing silence in the hallway.
After shooting a few swift glances around the seemingly uninhabited hallway, she shut the door quietly and turned to them.
"Nothing." She flopped down on a desk. "Nothing at all."
Blaine's mouth opened, but Quinn cut him off.
"She was looking at Finn the entire time."
"Well, they are getting-"
"Should I ask her?"
"Ye-"
"I don't know."
Kurt tried to interpose. "Quinn, you've never-"
"Wow, I'm nervous. When does that happen?"
Blaine tried again. "You've never held back talking to-"
"I've gotta ask her."
"Quinn!" both Kurt and Blaine exclaimed.
She ripped her eyes away from the faded whorls of the desk she was sitting on.
"Just go ask her." An almost sickeningly fervent smile from Blaine.
"You're going to drive yourself crazy otherwise." Kurt's dimples flared up with his grin.
"Don't let this pass you by," Blaine added, compassion softening his enthusiastic features. "You never know when it might be too late."
With a few winged hugs from Kurt and Blaine and a nervous look back, Quinn had marched into the hallway with a borrowed conviction.
This conviction almost vanished as soon as she saw Rachel ahead of her in the hallway. She looked back again, Kurt and Blaine shooing her to Rachel with a silly kind of optimism.
Before she could back out, she called out softly for Rachel.
"Hey, how do I look? Coach Sylvester gave it to me earlier and I couldn't resist."
"I'm glad you're happy. Everyone deserves to be happy." Her hair bobbed restlessly as she ducked her head. She didn't look so happy herself, but Quinn wasn't sure she dared to hope it was because of her.
"When you were singing that song," she continued, the words rushing out of her before she could stop them, "you were singing it to Finn, and only Finn, right?"
For a too long moment Rachel stared at her, perplexed and a little transparent, her feelings clouding over her judgment. Quinn wanted to slap her upside the head and pull her into a firm hug at the same time, and she clearly saw now that once her and Finn had set this thing in motion there was no stopping it. Rachel was just a teenager with feelings after all, just like she was, and she was trying to navigate through whatever this was as best she could. So, with a repressed sigh, she decided to support Rachel in her wedding. If there was one thing she had learned from her experiences thus far, it was that she couldn't try to hoard control over anything. If Rachel and Finn weren't meant to be married, then the wedding wouldn't go through. Some elusive power of fate would step in. For now, all she could do was relinquish control and be the best friend she could.
The smile on Rachel's face when Quinn told her of her attendance almost made her sacrifice worth it.
Quinn was fixing her makeup, checking her phone, doing everything but letting her thoughts settle on the fact that she was heading towards Rachel Berry's wedding.
It was too late to back out, she was already outfitted in her bridesmaid's dress and she was already behind the wheel, a sickening dread settling behind the pit of her stomach.
She had sent Rachel a text earlier that she had headed back to her house to get her bridesmaid's dress and was heading there now, but a few minutes later she received another text: "HURRY."
Another came in moments later: "WHERE ARE YOU?"
With a distressed calm, Quinn typed out a response: "ON MY WAY".
Her last thought before the crash was that when she had told herself that if Rachel and Finn weren't meant to be married fate would work it out, she had never expected to be an instrumental component in fate's plan.
When she opened her eyes, she was blinded with white.
White was too pure a color for this situation, too wholesome for what had just happened.
While for a moment she was disoriented, memories came rushing back to her as she tried to focus her eyes on the IV by her bedside. She saw a lot of pink and green in her memories, faded greens of trees and the brilliant pink of her own dress, and then her phone was vibrating quietly, and she picked it up to reply to Rachel, who had been getting married, and then suddenly there was a loud noise, a loud screeching of metal, and then she had woken up here.
Couldn't it all be a dream?
"It's not a dream," she heard a familiar voice saying. "Unfortunately."
Had she said something aloud?
"Yes, you did," the voice responded, patient and sounding a little worn. "I wish this was all a dream."
The voice finally clicked in her brain.
"Kurt?"
"Yes," he replied, "and Blaine's here too."
"I… I'm still so disoriented," she muttered, glancing around the hospital. "I'm so confused. Is Rachel's wedding off?"
Blaine shook his head yes, too sad for the knowing he seemed to possess. "It is. After you didn't show up and you didn't answer her texts or your phone, she got in her car and drove. She found you on the roadside, your car smashed up and the truck driver pacing frantically beside you."
"She called us then and cancelled the wedding, and we all rushed to where you were to watch the ambulance carry you away." Kurt finished.
"Where is everybody else?" Quinn asked.
"We asked them if we could talk to you alone," Blaine answered.
"No… I just need to talk to Rachel…"
"You will soon," Blaine answered her again. "Just relax for now, please."
"Guys?" Quinn asked tentatively. "Have the doctors… have they diagnosed me yet?"
Kurt shook his head. "You're going to be fine, Quinn. We're not going to let you fall." Blaine nodded emphatically besides him.
"Everything hurts," she suddenly whined. "My body, my head, my heart. Why did this happen to me?"
"No one knows why bad things happen," Blaine started, tenderly, "and I'm not sure the whole 'bad things happen but good things always come out of it' sentiment works here either. But I'd focus on the good anyways. You're alive, Rachel's not getting married, you're going to get better! We're all here for you."
"My Cheerio's uniform," she said suddenly, struggling to get up but realizing there were a number of medical devices prohibiting her from doing so, along with the sharp pain. "I can't be on the Cheerios!"
Kurt's mouth curled down. "I'm so sorry."
"I can't… I can't believe this! I finally got it back! I was going to make the most of my senior year!"
"You still can!" Kurt added. "Senior year's not over, Quinn! You may not be able to be on the Cheerios, but there's so much you can still do!"
"I don't know; I just want to know where Rachel and I stand."
"It's still not too late, you know," Blaine interjected, kneeling by her bedside. "It's never going to be too late to tell her how you feel."
"It looks like I can't do anything more than tell her anyways at this point," she feebly joked.
Blaine looked he wanted to crush her in a hug, and sad that their current situation stopped him from doing so.
"Rachel's right out there," Kurt said suddenly, his eyes narrowing.
"She's been waiting outside this door the entire time."
Kurt crossed the room and slung it open, and there she was indeed, sans Finn, a timid smile on her face.
"Ra-Rachel?" Quinn's voice came out as no more than an almost noiseless whisper.
"I'm sorry, I wanted to come to offer my condolences and I didn't want to wait, but…" Rachel didn't finish the sentence, but the look on her face was enough. It wasn't a certainty, she didn't look purely overjoyed or purely devastated, or even anything else in between, but instead… chaotic. She looked confused, but in the best way possible, because there was hope leaking into her features. She still had to figure out exactly what to do about Finn, and what this mess she had gotten herself into was, but she was looking at Quinn like she was the best and worst thing to ever happen to her, and she was happy and sad, a hurricane of emotions within her, but most of all, there was still that joy there in her features that was undeniably because of Quinn. Joy.
The aching in Quinn's bones suddenly seemed stupidly hollow next to the leap of her heart.